Category Archives: Greek Letters

There’s a few classes of free-to-play first person shooter. There’s the old and the ugly, usually trying to ape Counter-Strike in some way… your BlackShots and Sudden Attacks. Above that there are the high production value splashes of yesteryear, your A.V.A.’s and Genesis A.D.’s (rest in peace).

Nowadays with things like Warface and Blacklight Retribution being free and making that whole Korean age look so quaint, there’s a whole new tier. Based on my time with the Dirty Bomb closed beta, I’m willing to bet that it will come to define that tier.

One of my fondest memories of playing a pre-release game was the Halo: Reach Beta that ran for about two weeks some months before the game’s release. The changes beyond the visuals were subtle at best. But what made it so great was the feeling of familiarity that came with the game. You could give someone a controller, tell them “This is a Halo game,” and, assuming they’ve played one before, they instantly understand how the game should be played. Every change that was made to Reach was enhanced off of the typical Halo design; things like assassinations, jetpacks, and armor lock all fit with how Halo had been designed for years beforehand. So it makes sense that when I played the beta for Halo 5: Guardians, I wasn’t impressed by it’s first impression.

There has been a noticeable dearth in driving games this generation. Even EA, the kings of annualized games, just re-released last year’s Need for Speed game in a version that I personally call the “Game of Last Year Edition.” And after the catastrophic mess that was the launch of Driveclub, and the pretty good, but ultimately underwhelming Forza Horizon 2, Ubisoft’s The Crew seems the last hope for a little while.